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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25137466">(A Superhero's Amateur Guide to Saving a Life, Falling in Love, and Preserving the Space-Time Continuum Despite) Time Travel</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter'>susiecarter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe, Justice League (2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Antagonism, Denial of Feelings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kissing, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Justice League (2017), Rescue, Superbat Reverse Bang, Time Travel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 11:08:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>18,532</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25137466</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There isn't anything unusual about the day Bruce dies.</p><p>Clark wishes there had been. He wishes he'd known it was coming; he wishes he'd been ready and waiting to stop it before it happened at all.</p><p>But having the chance to fix it after the fact is the next-best thing. He'll take it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>154</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>851</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Avidreaders Batman completed faves, Avidreaders JL completed faves, Superbat Reverse Bang 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>(A Superhero's Amateur Guide to Saving a Life, Falling in Love, and Preserving the Space-Time Continuum Despite) Time Travel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to claim a second prompt for this round of the SRB—my partner jule did absolutely beautiful work with a piece titled "Time Travel", and I just couldn't resist! Unfortunately, in the end we weren't able to collaborate fully; but all the inspiration for this story rests with that original prompt, and I'm grateful to have had the chance to work on this complement for it. ♥ A real big thank-you, as always, to everybody involved with this event for making it such fun to participate in—and then especially to the mods, in this particular case, for the mercy of Amnesty Week. :D</p><p>As the summary makes obvious, this story involves what is ... <em>functionally</em> major character death, let's say. However, it is inexplicit and definitely does not stick. EVERYONE'S ALIVE FOR BASICALLY ALL OF THIS ONE, I PROMISE. After that, it's just a pile of the mortifying ordeal of being known, some technically canon-compliant missing scenes, a little kissing, and me managing to come up with a new way to have feelings about the events of the DCEU, <em>again</em>. \o/? Bruce's backstory as it's depicted here is based off that one canonical sequence of him as a kid, plus or minus osmosis from other media and sheer speculation. I definitely did not work up an exhaustive timeline, and I can only hope you'll all be generous to me and roll with it. ♥!</p><p><strong>ETA:</strong> jule very kindly put up the original prompt art! Please please please go take a look at it <a href="https://imgur.com/a/mz2eqoV">here</a>, and admire! :D</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>There isn't anything unusual about the day Bruce dies.</p><p>Clark wishes there had been. He wishes he'd known it was coming; he wishes he'd been ready and waiting to stop it before it happened at all.</p><p>But having the chance to fix it after the fact is the next-best thing. He'll take it.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>It's been a while since Clark got raised from the dead.</p><p>It's working out well, so far. Not that it hasn't been hard; not that it hasn't been strange. But it's been—it's been unexpectedly good, too, learning how to be alive again. The day he'd died, he's starting to realize he'd already been halfway there, halfway gone: it had been almost a relief, in a terrible way, to lie down and accept it. It had been such a mess, that's all. Black Zero, Zod, each of them giving rise in their turn to the Gotham Batman's loathing, to Doomsday. Clark's worst mistakes, confronting him all over again, and he'd almost <em>wanted</em> an out. He'd spent a year and a half trying to put those mistakes behind him and failing, trying to figure out how to be Superman and failing, feeling like it was never going to get better. Compared to that, Doomsday had felt so simple, so clean and straightforward. He could save the world, even if he had to die doing it; as final acts went, that was a good one. And it had sure seemed like it was going to be easier than saving the world and surviving it had been.</p><p>Looking back, he'd been—he'd been so tired. He'd let it get worse than it should have. He'd felt under attack, the whole world turning against him, nowhere to hide and nowhere to rest. He'd felt alone.</p><p>But he isn't. He isn't, not anymore.</p><p>There's so many of them now. A whole Justice League. A team, looking out for each other, working together. And Batman—Bruce. Bruce, right in the middle of all of it.</p><p>Bruce had made the others bring him back. Clark learned that afterward, and he'd have been tempted not to believe it except that it was Diana who'd told him. Bruce had made a team, so nobody was going to have to handle any of it alone the way Clark had been—not that that had been his reason for doing it, but it meant something to Clark anyway, secretly, buried deep. Bruce had made a home for them, too, turned what Clark knows had been the remains of Wayne Manor into a Hall of Justice. And Bruce had brought Clark back, and bought a bank.</p><p>Clark thinks about that a lot, at first.</p><p>And then he reminds himself of it a lot.</p><p>His resurrection's been working out well. He's alive, and he's grateful for it. He's not going to waste it. He's got his ma, and he's got Lois, even if it hasn't turned out the way he imagined it would when he bought that ring—even if he'd never pictured having it returned to him with a smile. He's got the League, half a dozen tentative friendships he'd never have expected before. People who are all strange, out of place, unusual and capable and ready to step in whenever they're needed. People who are like him, when the one thing he'd felt sure of when he was a kid was that there was never going to be anybody like that.</p><p>The hardest part about any of it these days is Bruce.</p><p>Clark calls him Bruce to his face out of sheer dogged stubbornness, not because it's been in any way invited. Bruce's generosity to the team, to Mom, to Clark himself, is practically unbelievable—not just in its scope, but in its relentless and inescapable contrast to the way Bruce acts the rest of the time.</p><p>He's competent, obviously. Almost frighteningly so. He's competent, and he's professional, and he works hard.</p><p>And in any context where he's able to avoid speaking to, interacting with, or even <em>looking</em> at Clark for any meaningful length of time, that's exactly what he does.</p><p>And Clark has no idea what to do about it.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He's taken to stopping by the Hall first thing in the morning, before he goes to work. If anything had come up overnight, he'd know about it, but—he likes to do it. He's still enjoying the knowledge that he <em>can</em>: that the Hall's there, the renovations and additions almost complete, the main wing already operational; that the League's there, filling it.</p><p>And when he does, he always stops by the control room.</p><p>Bruce probably wishes he didn't. Bruce probably wishes Clark avoided him with the same care and thoroughness he applies to avoiding Clark. But if that's what he wants, he's going to have to say so. Clark's not going to give up in the face of anything less.</p><p>"Good morning," Clark says from the doorway, in the firm, friendly tone he's settled on for this.</p><p>Bruce looks at him, and then away. "Activity report digests have been sent," he says, more to the monitor in front of him than to Clark.</p><p>Not a particularly subtle hint, coming from him. He collates the previous day's reports, any developments or situations he believes the League should be aware of, and creates a summary—sends it around to each of them. And Clark's sure it's true that he's done it. But it's not hard to read between the lines: <i>You've got all the information I'm going to give you. Stop talking to me.</i></p><p>"Thank you," Clark says, and he means it. It's work, and not particularly rewarding work; Bruce already has plenty of that, but he does it anyway. "I appreciate it."</p><p>Bruce doesn't look up again. "Mm."</p><p>Clark watches him, for a few seconds. It's weirdly difficult not to. He's seen Bruce so many different ways, by now: Batman, furious, murderous, lit poisonously green; Bruce Wayne, hands in his pockets, casual and smiling but sharp-eyed; and a whole bunch of different places in between. But he still can't help feeling like he's missing something. Like he needs to look longer, harder—like there's still a lot more left to see, if he can only figure out how to convince Bruce to let him.</p><p>He clears his throat. "See you later?"</p><p>And that, at last, brings Bruce's gaze flicking back to him, even if it's only for a moment. "With any luck," Bruce says, "no."</p><p>Clark grimaces a little, reaching up to rub sheepishly at the nape of his neck, because that's fair. If they see each other later, it'll be because something's happened—something big enough, bad enough, that the League had to get involved. "Right," he allows. "Well, see you tomorrow, then."</p><p>An implicit promise: Bruce isn't free of him yet. Clark's going to be back to force them through this ridiculously awkward two-step of theirs at least one more time.</p><p>And by the way Bruce's mouth flattens, the muscle working in his jaw, he's definitely picked up on it.</p><p>He doesn't say anything this time, not even a hum. He just turns his attention deliberately back to the screen in front of him, the information scrolling across it.</p><p>"Nice talking to you," Clark adds, quieter, aiming for wry—but it comes out wistful, too, a little, or at least it sounds that way to his own ears. He flushes and looks away, sneaks one last glance at Bruce that blurs with the speed he's using to do it, and then he bites his lip and goes.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Arthur's just settling in on one of the sofas in the front lounge, as Clark's passing through on his way out. Clark gives him a nod and says hi, but he can admit that it must come out sounding absent, distracted.</p><p>And Arthur doesn't say it back. Arthur looks at him, narrow-eyed, and then raises one eyebrow and says, "Man, you know you don't have to keep doing this to yourself, right?"</p><p>"What?" Clark says, grinding to a halt, blinking.</p><p>"It's like watching you hit your thumb with a hammer," Arthur says, "and then you're surprised when it hurts. Every time." He pauses. "Though I guess that would qualify as kind of a surprise for you, huh?"</p><p>"I," Clark says, and feels his ears get hot.</p><p>"He's a dick, that's all I'm saying. And if you're waiting for him to stop being a dick, you're going to be waiting a long goddamn time."</p><p>"No, I—" Clark says, and then stops and rubs at the bridge of his nose. "I know that," he admits.</p><p>Arthur's other eyebrow goes up. "Right."</p><p>"I do. I don't want him to think it bothers me," Clark elaborates. "I don't want him to think he can scare me off just by being—"</p><p>"A dick," Arthur fills in for him, when he pauses too long.</p><p>"Stubborn," Clark says firmly. "If it matters to me to get to know him, then I have to act like it does. I can't give up just because he's deliberately making it difficult."</p><p>Arthur's face does something Clark's not sure he wants to look at too closely. "You want to get to know him," he repeats.</p><p>"I—" Clark hesitates.</p><p>The answer is that he does. But that isn't all of it. It can't be, when the real sum of what he wants is so much more complicated than that. He isn't going to settle for just not being at each other's throats, for the bare minimum of a tacit mutual agreement that they aren't going to try to kill each other again. They can do better than that. He <em>knows</em> they can—knows they could, if Bruce would just give Clark a chance.</p><p>He's got some of the pieces already. He's been able to put a few of them together, even. At the time, he'd just been pissed off, frustrated; it had been infuriating, the way the Gotham Batman wouldn't leave him alone, kept posturing and getting in his face and trying to goad him into a fight. Before the last time, the time it had finally happened, Clark had honestly just thought the guy had to be an idiot. As if there were anybody left on the planet, after Zod, who could survive going blow-for-blow with Superman.</p><p>But Bruce isn't an idiot. Bruce knew what he was facing, knew what Clark could do to him—and he'd refused to back down. Protecting the world from Clark had been more important to him than the chance that Clark might have paused, that night Bruce had hit him with the Batmobile, might have paused and taken five minutes to break every bone in Bruce's body and then boil Bruce's brain in his skull. Because to Bruce that chance had existed, and at the time he'd had no way of understanding that to Clark, it hadn't.</p><p>Bruce had believed the worst of him, had believed he was the most dangerous thing in existence, and had promptly done his utmost to put himself between Clark and the rest of humanity.</p><p>Clark hadn't been in a position to appreciate that bravery for what it was, at the time. But he is now.</p><p>He'd decided he'd die to save the world. He hadn't understood then that Bruce had done the same.</p><p>And Bruce—Bruce is almost frighteningly smart. Bruce is dedicated, fiercely, unwaveringly. Bruce is generous, but doesn't want to be acknowledged for it; has brushed off Clark's every attempt to thank him for the bank, for the Hall, for the work he'd done and the effort he'd made and the lengths he'd gone to to bring Clark back to life. Clark doesn't understand why, but he <em>wants</em> to. He wants to learn why Bruce does what he does, how he became who he is, why he'd tried so hard to kill Clark and why he'd stopped, what he was thinking in that moment. Clark wants—he wants—</p><p>He becomes aware that he hasn't said anything in about fifteen seconds, that Arthur's giving him a steady knowing look. He can feel his face starting to go red.</p><p>"Something like that," he fumbles out, much too late.</p><p>"Right," Arthur says. "Well, good luck with that. Because you're definitely going to need it."</p><p>"Yeah," Clark agrees ruefully. "I am."</p><p>Arthur offers him half a smile, and leans up to clap him supportively on the arm as he passes, which is pretty nice of him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Clark makes it to work a couple minutes late, a carefully calculated margin. He hurries up to his desk, adjusts his glasses, waves at Lois.</p><p>So: it's a perfectly ordinary morning, in pretty much every respect.</p><p>Until, an hour and a half later, his League comm's alert goes off—at exactly the same moment that all the windows in the Planet building burst inwards in abrupt showers of light, glass, and noise.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>A shockwave, Clark realizes, after a few seconds. He let himself open up, reflexive, the instant he understood there was something wrong, and it's—he can hear it, a cascade, as it passes the Planet building and keeps going: a chorus of breaking windows, the next block and the next, blown out fractions of a second apart.</p><p>The League comm doesn't make noise, not when he doesn't have it in his ear. Too conspicuous. Just the barest tremor of a vibration; when he's dialed himself up like this, though, it shudders through him like an aftershock.</p><p>He opens up further, half determined and half dreading what he's going to find—and yes, there it is. Screaming.</p><p>He swallows, and turns around, and looks for Lois.</p><p>The rest of the Planet staff are scrambling, helping each other away from the windows. Lois is already looking out, squinting, in the direction the shockwave came from, phone to her ear, biting out quick sharp questions at someone. She meets his eyes, and gives him a little nod. She'll cover for him.</p><p>He turns and sprints for the stairs, and it's a test of restraint to stay at a Clark Kent pace—achingly slow, compared to what he's capable of—until he can get to one of the blind spots in the building's camera system and speed from there to to the roof.</p><p>He's fast. He's as fast as he knows how to be.</p><p>But he's not fast enough to beat the ships.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The ships are huge.</p><p>There are dozens of them, at least a hundred. They're—they seem almost unreal. Only half there, translucent, and what there is of them is made of light, white and blazing, hard to look at for too long.</p><p>There's a hole in the sky over the bay. Clark doesn't know how else to say it. A hole, and on the other side is blackness, sheer endless void, except for a single dull red star, dying. There's nothing else, no matter how hard Clark looks; no other stars in the depth beyond, no nebulae, not even the faintest smattering of light to suggest a distant galaxy.</p><p>A far, far corner of the universe—or a different one entirely. Clark can't guess which.</p><p>Clark learns later that there were no messages, no attempts at communication. Even Zod had had the courtesy to make a transmission before he started trying to break the planet's crust open. But not these ships, whoever they belong to.</p><p>In the moment, though, Clark's not inclined to extend the benefit of the doubt. There's nothing in Metropolis that could have done them any harm, not in the last two minutes—but Clark can see already that they're firing, hot white beams of light slicing down into the city at the edge of the bay.</p><p>Or—no, he thinks, not quite. Into the water. Into the water, as if whoever or whatever is in those ships, it doesn't perceive any meaningful difference between the city and the bay, as if it's all the same to them.</p><p>Or, Clark acknowledges, as if it really is General Zod all over again. Maybe what they <em>want</em> is to cut into the Earth itself, and they couldn't care less who's living on it or where they're aiming when they do.</p><p>He's moving so fast that he sees another beam forming, a mile away, and he's there over the bay to take the hit from it before it can strike the waves. It's blistering, incandescent; it's like getting hit by that nuke all over again, except Clark's bones don't get hammered into a new shape by it. It's—it doesn't actually hurt at all, he realizes dimly after a second. It felt like it might, but the sensation was all impact, heat, and no actual pain. It—actually, it—</p><p>He sucks in a breath and opens his eyes, and looks down at himself where he's still hanging in the air, albeit knocked maybe a quarter-mile lower than he was.</p><p>He's glowing. His skin, his suit, all over, so hard he's actually leaving a faint afterimage when he moves.</p><p>However far they've come, apparently their weapons are made up of exactly the wrong kind of light for fighting a Kryptonian.</p><p>It turns out he can get a grip on the shimmering half-outlines of their hulls, no matter how insubstantial they look. They have mass, and they're subject to the principles of physics: he can <em>throw</em> them away from him, back out over the water, clear of Metropolis and Gotham both. And he doesn't want to kill anyone if he can help it—but if they fire at him, and the blaze of light in him has gotten so bright that their beams don't just hit him but ricochet off him, well. There's only so much he can do about that, and if they want to stop hitting each other, all they have to do is stop shooting at him.</p><p>They don't stop shooting at him.</p><p>He spies, in the distance, a light of another kind, not hard sharp white but soft gold. Diana, and her lasso. And those bright red blasts nearby have got to be Victor. The water of the bay moves beneath him, forms itself up into a foaming shifting wall as if to stop the ships from advancing over the shoreline—that's how he knows Arthur's arrived. And if he listens, he can hear Barry crackling around behind him, zipping people away from the waterfront faster than they can evacuate themselves. With any luck, it won't matter; the ships won't reach land at all. But if they do, then it'll be for the best if there's no one left down there to get hurt.</p><p>Clark settles into something of a rhythm. Whoever's in those ships, they don't seem able to fathom that their weapons aren't doing what they're supposed to—they keep shooting at him. The beams cut through the air with a soft shimmering sound and hit him, and he's overflowing with it, blazing bright, unstoppable. The hole in the sky is still there behind them, and it occurs to him that maybe he can push them back through it, even if he has to tow them there one at a time.</p><p>And it's only then that he realizes there's something below him: a slim, dark shape. There are still dozens of ships, crossing and re-crossing beams that aren't aimed at Clark at all but are slicing down into the water of the bay; and the shape is smoothly dogfighting its way around and between them, unhesitating and unimpeded.</p><p>Bruce. It must be Bruce. The Batwing.</p><p>"Batman," Clark says.</p><p>"Superman," Bruce bites out, the word crisp even though it's doubled—coming through the comm in Clark's ear and directly, over the hot hiss of the alien weapons, before Clark manages to rein his hearing back in. "How close have you gotten?"</p><p>"I can touch them," Clark says.</p><p>"See through them? Hear them?"</p><p>Clark blinks, and tries it.</p><p>"I—I don't know. I can see through them, but inside they're—it's just light. I can't hear anything."</p><p>Which is pretty goddamn weird. But then if the ships are extradimensional—who the hell knows? Maybe they're halfway out of phase somehow, not all here; just real enough to try to punch a few holes, to crack and shimmer and dissolve apart under the blows of their own weapons, but with the heart of them, whoever's inside them, behind a veil Clark's vision isn't enough to see through.</p><p>"Mm," Bruce murmurs in Clark's ear, hardly more than a breath, and in front of him, below him, the Batwing yaws and dips, a seemingly effortless dodge. "Cyborg and I are both running scans, but his are going to be more comprehensive. Try to get within range—"</p><p>That's when it happens, right then, before Bruce can even finish the sentence.</p><p>It's Clark's fault. It's at least a little bit Clark's fault. All the enhanced senses and super-fast reflexes in the world, but he can still be surprised—if he's not paying attention to the right things, if he's not looking in the right direction. He's got eyes on one ship, and he's hanging in the air, just barely starting to pick up speed, still waiting to learn exactly what it is Bruce wants him to do, and he's listening.</p><p>He's listening to Bruce. Bruce's voice in his ear, soft, clipped, steady; all the shades and variations in frequency that combine to form the sound of it, the hum of Bruce's breath in his throat, the shape of his mouth—</p><p>Everything goes white. Clark flinches from it, tries to squint through it. A whisper of mass, half-there, the same way the ships' hulls feel against his palms when he grasps them, and more light, a pulse in the air that knocks him into a brief sidelong tumble. Another shockwave, he thinks belatedly. One of the ships that had been struck by stray fire, and the one he'd been closing with: they collided, <em>exploded</em>, though the sound of it is hardly louder than the one their weapons make, a bright hard hiss, frothing, disorienting.</p><p>Clark steadies himself, reorients in the air and only then thinks to look down. The Batwing isn't where it should be, it's—it was flung much further than Clark, it was <em>torn apart</em>, and Clark's moving with all the speed he's got in him, crossing the distance in a fraction of a second, but what's left of the Batwing was already in the process of splashing down into the bay.</p><p>He dives down with it, digs his fingers into the frame and rips it the rest of the way open.</p><p>Bruce's heart is still beating.</p><p>Clark is frozen for an instant, vision flickering between levels. Blood in the water, too much of it; the sharp splintered ends of broken bones, swelling pooling bruises, internal bleeding; Bruce's jaw beneath the cowl, pale against the dark water, slack and insensate—</p><p>Better that Clark pick him up wrong and hurt him a little worse than let him drown. Clark ducks under the water's surface, gets an arm around Bruce and grips and simply lifts, and when they come up again he rolls them in the air, his body beneath Bruce's, the best makeshift backboard he can manage.</p><p>A breath. A pulse. Both audible. Clark squeezes his eyes shut and flies, and within a moment they've passed through Arthur's sea-wall with a splash.</p><p>"Down," Bruce grits into Clark's ear.</p><p>Clark's grip on him tightens, convulsive, relief sweeping through him with an intensity that's almost pain.</p><p>He brings them in for a landing—not on the docks; too open, Bruce would hate to be put there. A little further, that's all, to the sheltered space between two warehouses, between a transport rig and a stack of cargo containers. Cover.</p><p>He rolls them again as they come down, the better to settle Bruce to the ground as evenly as possible. And—god, even as fast as Clark's been going, as little time as there's been since he pulled Bruce out of the water, Bruce has bled all over him, Clark's suit splashed dark with it.</p><p>Shit. Shit—</p><p>"Let go," Bruce bites out.</p><p>Clark swallows, and pries his hands away. "Bruce—"</p><p>"Get back," Bruce adds, and then makes a strange half-choked sound, seizing up, tight through the chest, like he can't draw a breath. Clark fumbles for Bruce's head, digs his fingers in. Later, Bruce can try to kill him all over again for this, but there's nobody around for at least half a mile except the other members of the League, and surely it's going to be easier for Bruce to breathe without the goddamn cowl on.</p><p>Clark manages to tug it free. Bruce gasps, coughs, eyes squeezed shut. Clark's senses spasm wide, and for an instant it's relentless overload, every detail shouting at him: Bruce's wet eyelashes sticking to each other, the dark prickling smatter of Bruce's stubble, every single one of the feathering tumbled angles of Bruce's hair and the exact sound-pattern of the blood rushing through the capillaries beneath his skin—</p><p>"—in the field," Bruce chokes out. "Go."</p><p>"<em>Bruce</em>—"</p><p>"Come back. For me." Bruce jerks a little, swallowing like it hurts to do it. "Later. I'm—I. Can't help." He stops, gathering himself, digging his teeth into his lip—forcing his eyes open, and Clark can see every tiny flicker in his spasming pupils as he drags his gaze to Clark's face, <em>makes</em> it focus. "Clark," he says, slower, clearer, deliberate. "I'm down. You have to go. I'm about to pass out. If you—cauterize—"</p><p>He isn't wrong. His eyes are sharp, fixed on Clark; and then aren't, gone, his entire body slumping, his head lolling to one side, emphasis Clark didn't need that he's somewhere far away from Clark.</p><p>Cauterize. Right. Clark sucks in an unsteady breath, blinks his eyes hot—the red light comes and then flickers, because it's always easier when he's angry and he's the furthest thing from angry right now. But Bruce needs this from him. If he leaves Bruce here and rejoins the battle, and then makes it back only to find Bruce has bled out, he doesn't know what he'll do.</p><p>It takes barely a moment. The blood from the worst rent in Bruce's gut slows immediately. The smell is sickening.</p><p>Clark makes himself look through Bruce more carefully, checks the entire length of his spine one nerve, one bone, at a time. Nothing obvious, which makes it worth the risk to put him in an actual recovery position instead of just leaving him here on his back.</p><p>That's how Clark discovers his hands are shaking.</p><p>He almost laughs. He doesn't know why. His eyes are stinging. "I <em>will</em> come back for you," he says, to Bruce's slack blood-streaked face. "I will. I swear. I'm not going to leave you here and not come back. I'm going to get you out alive."</p><p>He has to go back. He can't leave the rest of them to fight this fight without him.</p><p>But he has to close his eyes to do it—to make himself look away from Bruce, and leave.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He doesn't remember the rest of it very well.</p><p>It all blurs together, in the end. More of those pale, brilliant ships, even brighter against the sucking blackness of the hole in the sky behind them. Clark gives up on caution, courtesy; not even a word of warning, not a single recognizable attempt to communicate, and for all they know, for all they're able to tell, these ships are unmanned anyway. He starts punching them right out of the sky, tearing his way through them, growing used to the sharp fizz of the shimmering half-material of them under his hands.</p><p>Something changes, toward the end. Maybe they weren't expecting this kind of resistance. Maybe they don't know what else to do. The ones that are left start shaping themselves into a new formation, not the broad wedge they'd begun in but a tighter, sharper arrow. They're more aggressive, too—feels like a weird call to make, considering they've been doing nothing but fire on everything in range of them since they showed up, but there's a focus to it now, an intent. They hammer Diana hard, try to force Victor out of the sky, practically evaporate the water out from under Arthur with hot white blasts of light.</p><p>And then, abruptly, they take off. They take off <em>toward</em> the waterfront.</p><p>There are too many. Diana lassos a couple, swings herself up and punches right through another. Victor seems to have figured out some way to recalibrate his systems such that he can—can disassemble them, or maybe just shove them back into their own dimension. Clark forces them to collide with each other, blasts them out of the sky with his eyes, and it's even easier than usual, the way they've filled him to overflowing with light.</p><p>Three of them make it far enough to hit Arthur's wall of water head-on. Just three. Two of those don't hold together long enough to reach the other side, cracking apart under the impact, blasting water in all directions with a burst of white light.</p><p>But one of them does.</p><p>It's damaged. Damaged, or—or disoriented, or who knows what else. It doesn't keep flying, doesn't move over Metropolis and start shooting down into the city center. It descends, too fast, a furious and unsustainable angle.</p><p>It slams into the port. The waterfront.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It isn't that there's a body or anything.</p><p>There wouldn't be. Couldn't be, that close to the point of impact, that close to the center of the wave of heat and light that burst from the pale ship as it destroyed itself.</p><p>But in the condition he was in, even if he'd come to, Bruce couldn't possibly have dragged himself far enough to escape the blast radius. There's no sign that he did, later, amidst the scorched rubble that remains of the area of the docks where Clark last saw him—not that much evidence would have survived.</p><p>Clark can't even find the cowl.</p><p>He tries. He tries for a long time. He looks, he listens. It's easier, with the waterfront evacuated for the rest of the day. He wishes distantly that it weren't. He wants difficulty. He wants doubt. He doesn't want to feel sure.</p><p>But he can't stave it off forever.</p><p>The understanding settles on him slowly, relentlessly, inexorable crushing weight he can't get out from under, can't breathe through.</p><p>It isn't true. It can't be. It doesn't make any sense. Bruce is uncompromising, implacable, unstoppable. <em>Clark</em> couldn't beat him, couldn't hold him down, couldn't force surrender out of him. Bruce is—</p><p>Bruce was—</p><p>Clark recoils from the thought, from his own head, from himself. No. <em>No</em>.</p><p>No. It can't end like this. It won't.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He finds himself back at the Hall, after a while.</p><p>He doesn't intend to be. He's going to keep looking. Of course he is. But he—he should check in, he thinks vaguely. He should check in.</p><p>The rest of them had gone, earlier. He remembers, dimly, agreeing that they ought to, that they needed to speak to the Metropolis city administration, start coordinating the clean-up effort, all the usual League business post-disaster. They'd each come back, in turns—Diana, more than once. But Clark had the senses to detect Bruce, the strength to lift rubble, the speed and flight to do something about it once he found Bruce. He was the best suited to keep looking.</p><p>Victor was a close second. But Victor—Victor had run a broad sweeping scan of the whole waterfront, brought all his sensors and systems to bear, and then had gone quiet, looked at Clark and then away and left him to it.</p><p>Victor obviously had other things to do, Clark had decided at the time. That was fine.</p><p>He doesn't want to think there was another reason for it.</p><p>Clark sets down in the driveway. The Hall really is almost done, but he still remembers what it looked like the first time Bruce brought the team by, and he tries to be careful with it; he doesn't just blast his way inside. They'd all chipped in with the renovations, the construction, even though Bruce had done his best to turn them down, insisting he'd wanted them to take a look just to see what they were dealing with, to have a frame of reference for deciding what they wanted the Hall to have once it was ready for them to use.</p><p>Diana's in the main hall, when Clark goes in, and she's not in her armor anymore. "Clark," she says, and her expression is grave and soft, and she reaches out, draws him in, touches his cheek.</p><p>That's the first time he realizes his face is wet. He doesn't know how long it's been that way.</p><p>"Oh, Clark," Diana says again, quieter, and coaxes his head down against her shoulder.</p><p>"I don't know where he is," Clark hears himself say. "Diana—I can't find him."</p><p>"I know," Diana says, very low. "I know. I'm sorry."</p><p>"I can't," Clark says, and then, "I couldn't," and then he has to stop and swallow hard. He feels distantly aware that he's—he's clinging to her too hard, holding on too tight. Except it's Diana; he can't hurt her. It's okay. "I shouldn't have left him there."</p><p>"Clark—"</p><p>"I shouldn't have left him there. I should have taken him into the city, I should have taken him to a <em>hospital</em>."</p><p>"He told you to," Diana says.</p><p>Clark falls silent.</p><p>"I wasn't listening. I didn't have to. He told you to. He must have; he wouldn't have wanted you absent from the battlefield for his sake, not for a moment longer than necessary." She smooths a hand through Clark's hair. It's easy for her to do it, right now—not slicked back the way he tries to keep it when he's Superman, not after all that. "It was his way. It isn't your fault."</p><p>"I shouldn't have left him there," Clark says again, helpless, unsteady. "I could have taken him somewhere else. I could have gotten there first and gotten him out of there, if I'd just—I should have been faster. I just needed to be faster. I just needed more <em>time</em>—"</p><p>He stops short, breath caught in his throat.</p><p>He just—</p><p>He just needs more time, that's all.</p><p>Diana goes still against him, and then closes her hands steadily over his shoulders, and eases back a half-step, just far enough to look him in the eye. "Clark," she says, gently, evenly. "Clark, please, don't act rashly."</p><p>"Barry did it," Clark blurts. "Remember? Bruce told us. He showed us the security tape from the Cave. Barry did it so Bruce would know how to stop me in the park—"</p><p>"Barry did it <em>wrong</em>," Diana says, not unkindly. "He was too early; he didn't go where he intended to." She pauses, and touches his face. "I understand. I do. And I'm not saying it cannot be done. But that doesn't make it right. People die, Clark. Every day, every moment. Will you go back for every single one? If you don't—who will you go back for? Who deserves it, and who doesn't? Why is that choice yours to make?"</p><p>Because it's <em>him</em>, Clark doesn't say. Because it's him. Because he didn't let me go when he could have—because the least I can manage is to try to do the same for him.</p><p>Because it's not supposed to be like this. Because I'm not finished with him yet. Because there's so much I still haven't said to him, so much I still haven't done.</p><p>Because we needed more time.</p><p>He closes his eyes instead, rubs his face with his hand, makes himself breathe. "You're right," he says. "You're right. I shouldn't just—we should talk about it. The whole League, together. I'm not thinking straight."</p><p>Diana offers him a soft half-smile, wistful, weary, full of sorrow. "It's all right," she says. "You should eat something. Rest. There will be many arrangements to make tomorrow, no matter what we decide to do."</p><p>"Right," Clark says. "Okay." He hesitates. "You're—where are you going?"</p><p>Diana's face changes, a shadow sweeping across it. "Alfred," she says, very quietly. "I'm sure he has the readings from the Batwing, up until they stopped. He must have been watching the news. I commed him, earlier, but—" She stops, lifts a hand and presses it to her mouth. Her eyes are bright. "He shouldn't be alone," she says at last. "He shouldn't have to be alone."</p><p>Jesus. Clark's heart feels squeezed in his chest, wrung tight. He touches Diana's wrist, her elbow, silent ridiculous apology for having made her talk about it. "Of course," he says, and hugs her again, and then lets her go.</p><p>He has a suite in the Hall, now. They all do. He goes and finds some clean clothes, strips out of the uniform—rinses himself off, quick, in the shower, washing away dust and ash, seawater, and Bruce's—</p><p>And Bruce's blood.</p><p>He dresses, digs out one of his spare pairs of glasses. Just in case. He won't need the suit, surely. No one's going to see him. But he should at least have the glasses.</p><p>He meant what he said. Diana could have lassoed him and it would all have come out the same. She is right. He shouldn't act rashly. He isn't thinking straight.</p><p>The thing is, he doesn't care.</p><p>He can't leave it like this. He can't let this happen. Bruce defied Diana, defied Diana and biology and sheer probability, to make sure Clark came back. How can Clark do any less for him?</p><p>
  <i>I'm not going to leave you here and not come back. I'm going to get you out alive.</i>
</p><p>The last words he said to Bruce, even if Bruce couldn't hear them. He meant them. He made Bruce a promise; and he's not going to break it, no matter what he has to do to pull it off.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They have one of the mother boxes, still.</p><p>They hadn't let Steppenwolf's ship leave with any of them on board. Arthur took one back to his people. Diana found a way to return another to Themyscira, along with a message for her mother. But the one that made Victor, the one that was humanity's—the League guards it now, secured deep beneath the Hall.</p><p>They all have access credentials. In case of emergency, in case it ever needs to be moved. There'll be a record of it. Of course there will. But by the time anybody thinks to check, it isn't going to matter anymore.</p><p>There's a couple dozen different layers of security, because of course there are. Bruce set the whole thing up. Clark makes his way patiently through them, one at a time, distantly grateful for Superman's essentially perfect memory. There's no string of access codes, no sequence of complex deactivation procedures, that he can't complete correctly, having been shown it even once.</p><p>He doesn't bother to remove the box from the vault, once he's inside. He just steps toward it, reaches for it: flattens his hands against opposite sides of the cube of it, and picks it up.</p><p>He doesn't know what he's doing. Not the way Steppenwolf did. He holds it in his hands and looks down at it, and he says, "Please. Please, help me. I want to save him. I want to fix this. We were just getting started, we were—I need more time."</p><p>He lets his eyes fall shut; he made himself keep calm on the way down here, didn't let himself think about it, but now the desperation is spilling out again, the sheer unbearable disbelieving <em>grief</em>, and he's not going to be able to hold it back anymore. His fingertips dig into the box, hard, his arms shaking, and he doesn't stop himself because he doesn't have to. It's not like he can damage it.</p><p>"<em>Please</em>," he whispers to it, fierce and furious.</p><p>He feels it, first. A thrumming, crackling sense of <em>energy</em>, building up between his hands. Hears it, next, and then sees it, light building behind the backs of his eyelids, sparks whirling, the hum and click of the box's shifting planes and pieces.</p><p>And then—</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bruce falls.</p><p>He isn't expecting to. He's running. He's running, and then somehow the ground goes out from under him, and there's nothing under his feet anymore, and he falls.</p><p>He lands hard. The breath's knocked out of him. He feels stunned, dizzy. His whole body throbs, but his leg's worse than any of the rest of it, a deep sharp ache like nothing he's ever felt before. His eyes well up before he can stop them. He wants—</p><p>He wants Mom. He wants Mom, but she's not going to come, no matter how loud or long he shouts for her.</p><p>He squeezes his eyes shut, and digs his teeth into his lip. Suddenly he doesn't want to make a sound. Then it'll be like—it'll be like that's why she's not here, because she just didn't know. Because she just couldn't find him. Not because they shut her up in all that stone and locked her in, right next to Dad, and she's never going to come out.</p><p>He rubs his wet eyes, dashes at them angrily with his sleeves until they're almost dry again. It's dark down here, except for the light that's coming down from where he fell, from the hole he left. He squints up at it, and drags in a hitching breath. It looks small, from here. It looks far away.</p><p>There's a noise, somewhere in the dark around him, where the light's not touching. He freezes, and then huddles in on himself a little, even though moving makes his leg hurt so much he can hardly breathe. He doesn't like noises. He doesn't like noises, and he doesn't like the dark, and he really, really doesn't want to find out what else is in here—</p><p>He doesn't understand what happens next. A burst of light, way too bright, not sunlight or a flashlight or anything. A rush like wind, like air, and then <em>something</em> is everywhere, taking off, all around him, swirling and beating at him with huge dark wings. He can't breathe, he can't move. He can't think. He covers his face and sobs, weird and cracked, too afraid to scream.</p><p>"What? What the—oh, jesus. Hey, hey, kid. You're going to be okay, hang on—"</p><p>Someone's there. The wings are—are gone, a couple last screeches, a flutter that makes Bruce flinch; and then there are hands on him, big broad ones, settling gently across his shoulders, cautious.</p><p>"Hang on," the weird stranger repeats, soft. "It's all right. Bats, that's all. I scared them."</p><p>Bruce sucks in a breath, and twists away. <i>That's all</i>, like it's that easy. "Go away!" he snaps at the guy, and he wants to shout it but it comes out ragged, hoarse, thin. "Get off me, get away from me—"</p><p>"Sorry," the stranger says instantly, and lifts his hands away, holds them up palm out. "Look, kid, I can't leave you here. But I won't touch you, and I won't come any closer. Okay?"</p><p>Bruce curls up a little tighter, and cries out all over again when his leg moves.</p><p>"Shit," the stranger says under his breath, which isn't a word Bruce is supposed to know, but he does anyway. "You hurt your leg?"</p><p>This guy's kind of stupid, Bruce thinks, if he has to ask. But it's nice, sort of, to pretend even for a second that it's up to Bruce to answer, to tell him yes or no. To let him understand that Bruce is hurt and needs help, or not. Bruce swallows, and wipes his face again, and looks up.</p><p>"Yeah," he admits. "I fell."</p><p>"You—" The stranger stops short, and looks up, squints into the light the same way Bruce was a minute ago. "You fell," he repeats slowly. "You're lucky you didn't break your neck."</p><p>"I know how to fall," Bruce snaps at him, because being annoyed with this guy is better than thinking about how bad his leg hurts. "I learned."</p><p>It's true. Alfred said it was okay to teach him that much. And how to punch, and a couple other things. Because Mom and Dad are—because Mom and Dad were rich, and people might try to hurt Bruce to get things from them, and Bruce should know how to hurt people who try to hurt him.</p><p>The guy is quiet for a second. "It isn't broken," he says, tone gentle in a way that makes Bruce want to snap at him even worse.</p><p>Bruce frowns at him warily. "How do you know?"</p><p>The guy hesitates. "Just trust me," he says. "It's a thing some grown-ups can do, okay? I can tell." He looks up at the ceiling of the cave again, the hole Bruce made, and then at Bruce. He's still got his hands out. "Is anybody up there? Are they looking for you?"</p><p>"I don't know," Bruce admits. "I ran away. I wasn't supposed to."</p><p>The guy swears again, a little longer than he did the first time.</p><p>"You're not supposed to say those words."</p><p>The guy winces. "You're right. You're right, kid, sorry."</p><p>Bruce looks him up and down, and tilts his head. "You didn't fall."</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"That's how I got in here," Bruce reminds him. "I fell. But you didn't."</p><p>The guy looks at Bruce and falters a little, weight shifting. "I—didn't," he agrees, after a second. "Right again. I, um. I came in another way."</p><p>"So you know how to get out," Bruce says.</p><p>The guy blinks, and looks at his hands: still held out, palms open. And then all around him, in a quick circle. And then up at the hole, the light streaming down.</p><p>"I—definitely have a way to get out," he says, like that doesn't mean basically the same thing, and then he clears his throat. "But I'm pretty sure it won't work for you without my help. Look, I'm—I should have introduced myself. I'm Clark."</p><p>"I'm Bruce," Bruce says.</p><p>He doesn't say his last name. Not right away. That's another thing he's learned—because people know his parents, and they'll know Bruce belongs to them if he tells them his last name is Wayne. So he isn't supposed to say it, unless he's in public or there's a real reason they need to know.</p><p>But this time, it doesn't matter. Clark jerks anyway, eyes going wide, staring at Bruce like the name means something to him.</p><p>"You're—Bruce."</p><p>"Yeah," Bruce says, chin up. Maybe Clark does know who he is; but if he does, he came up with a really weird plan to kidnap Bruce, hiding in a cave underground and waiting for Bruce to happen to fall into it.</p><p>"Jesus," Clark says softly, hand at his mouth. He swallows, once and then again. He's still staring. His eyes look wet. "Bruce, you—what are you doing out here? What happened?"</p><p>"My mom and dad are dead," Bruce spits.</p><p>He does it like he's angry, because maybe that will help. Maybe it'll be easier. But his eyes are stinging anyway, filling up all over again, and Clark takes a step toward him and then stops short, like he forgot for a second that he promised not to come closer.</p><p>He sticks to it. He doesn't move again. He's not going to touch Bruce, not going to pat him on the head and tell him what a brave boy he's being, or hug him too hard, or make him blow his nose.</p><p>That's what ends up making it easier. Not being angry, but Clark—Clark doing what he said he would, because he promised.</p><p>"Bruce," he says quietly.</p><p>"They're getting buried today. They're going in the mausoleum," and Bruce has gone through the syllables enough times in his head to not stumble over them anymore. "I didn't want to see. I didn't want to be there, so I ran away." He gulps for breath, and adds, "It's okay. You can come closer. I don't mind."</p><p>Clark does it instantly, taking another long step and then dropping down into a crouch. His eyes are blue, soft, steady. He looks hurt, even though he already said he didn't fall, even though his legs are fine. "That's awful, Bruce," he says. "I'm sorry. I'd have run away, too." He bites his lip. "Look, I can—I can get you back up there where Alfred can find you. But I'll have to pick you up."</p><p>Bruce thinks about it. If Clark wanted to grab him, he could've done it already. He could've taken Bruce out whatever other way there is, however he got in here, and nobody would have known about it. Taking Bruce back up instead, where Bruce is going to get found, is basically the opposite of what kidnappers do, as far as Bruce knows.</p><p>And—wait a second.</p><p>"You know Alfred?" he says uncertainly.</p><p>Clark's eyes go wide again for a second, and then he grimaces. "Um," he says. "Sort of."</p><p>"Okay," Bruce says.</p><p>If Clark knows Alfred, then he's not a kidnapper. No way. If Clark knows Alfred, then it must be okay. And the thing is, he's got to. When there's parties and things, it's—all the grownups call Alfred "Pennyworth", when they call him anything at all. Mom and Dad call him Alfred, and Bruce does, but nobody else.</p><p>"Okay?"</p><p>"Yeah," Bruce says, and holds out his arms.</p><p>Clark reaches out and picks him up just under them, and Bruce grabs his shoulders. He's expecting it to hurt, to pinch. He's too old to get picked up anymore, too heavy for it, and it isn't comfortable when people try, most of the time.</p><p>But if Bruce is too heavy for Clark, it's hard to tell. Clark's hands are steady, and he's not squeezing too hard or anything. He lifts Bruce straight up, so his leg doesn't even swing, and then it's—then he lifts even further, so far he's lifting himself, too.</p><p>"Whoa," Bruce says.</p><p>Clark smiles at him, a little lopsided. "Don't worry," he says. "I won't drop you."</p><p>They keep going. Up, and up, and up, until Bruce can lift an arm and reach out and touch the edge of the hole, the places where the boards broke under him.</p><p>"There we go," Clark says, lifting him through—hands at his waist, for a second, as Bruce starts pulling himself up with his arms, and then down to cup the sole of Bruce's shoe, his good leg, like he's giving Bruce any old ordinary boost.</p><p>Bruce squirms up the rest of the way, and then twists around. The hole's too small for Clark. He isn't holding onto the edges of it, isn't trying to climb through. He's just—hanging there, looking up at Bruce, the sunshine falling down on his face.</p><p>"How are you even doing that?" Bruce says.</p><p>Clark's smile gets wider, and at the same time weirder, his mouth twisting just a little, the lines around his eyes getting deep in a way that makes him look sad. "I'm pretty sure you're actually going to know the answer to that better than I do," he says quietly. "Or at least you're going to have some way better theories."</p><p>"That doesn't make any sense," Bruce informs him.</p><p>"You're telling me," Clark mutters, under his breath. "Look, for the record, I'm really sorry about this, and I don't know what happened. I kind of hope you don't remember this at all."</p><p>"Yeah, right," Bruce says. Like there's any way he's going to <em>forget</em> that a guy who can fly saved him from bats.</p><p>"But, look," Clark says, and reaches up with one hand, holds it there until Bruce touches his palm. "Look, if you do, then I just want to say—you're going to be okay, Bruce."</p><p>Bruce swallows, and doesn't answer.</p><p>"I know it probably doesn't seem like it right now," Clark adds, hushed. "But it's true. It's true. Okay?"</p><p>Bruce closes his eyes. He wants to say okay back. He wants to believe it. But he's not sure he does.</p><p>There's a breeze. The trees move. Bruce breathes.</p><p>And then there's a light, somewhere beyond his eyelids, and Clark says, "<em>Wait</em>—"</p><p>Bruce blinks his eyes open, ready to tell Clark he's being weird again, that Bruce isn't going anywhere. But Clark is—Clark's gone. There's nobody there.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When somebody does come, at last, Bruce is still sitting next to the hole. He tells them his leg went through the boards, that that's why he's hurt. Nobody's suspicious.</p><p>He couldn't have fallen, after all. There's no way he could have climbed back up, not with his ankle that badly sprained. Alfred talks about having to be careful with it, that it might turn out to be broken—but it isn't.</p><p>Bruce isn't surprised to hear it. Clark said it wouldn't be.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>A mistake, Clark thinks, adrift in endless light. A blip. The box has been around for hundreds of thousands of years, millions; on that kind of timescale, what's thirty-five years? The barest fraction of a miss, that's all.</p><p>It's probably not a big deal. There isn't necessarily a paradox here. Just because Bruce never mentioned having met a creepy stranger who looked exactly like Clark, lurking under his family's estate for no good reason—that doesn't mean anything.</p><p>Maybe he did forget. He must have been young. Nine, ten at the most, if his parents had just died. Maybe he didn't remember it that well; not well enough to be sure, not well enough to feel like he could talk to Clark about it.</p><p>Not that he's ever talked to Clark about much of anything. But that's what Clark's trying to fix. There'll be all the time in the world to learn about Bruce, to get to know him, if Clark can just—</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bruce isn't supposed to be up here.</p><p>He knows he isn't supposed to be up here. But he doesn't give a shit, and if Alfred wants him to come down, then that's just too fucking bad.</p><p>He rubs at his eyes—just because they're kind of sore, that's all. Just because he's tired. He draws a slow breath and tilts his head, looks out over the edge of the roof. It's probably going to be time for dinner, soon. Not that he cares, obviously. He's not hungry anyway.</p><p>There's a burst of light, somewhere behind him. Hot, sharp, strange—heat lightning, maybe, and he jerks and twists around reflexively to look for the source of it, eyes wide.</p><p>"Who the hell are you?" he says loudly, scrambling to sit up.</p><p>"No, no, wait," the guy says, hands already coming up. "Not again—come on!"</p><p>"What are you <em>doing</em> up here?" Bruce shouts at him, and he's half pissed off and half bewildered. How could anybody have climbed up here without—without someone noticing, without Bruce hearing it? How did he even get on the grounds in the first place? What the fuck.</p><p>And then Bruce takes another look at the guy, and stops, halfway through balling up his fists.</p><p>"Wait a minute," he says. "I know you. Don't I know you?"</p><p>His voice breaks right in the middle of saying it, which is fucking infuriating. He wanted to sound steady, sure of himself, like he had a clue. He wanted to let this guy know he wasn't going to be able to pull one over on Bruce. And instead he sounds like a kid, like he hasn't already hit six feet and counting.</p><p>"Not exactly," the guy says with a grimace. "Look, I—I'm really not supposed to be here—"</p><p>"No kidding," Bruce says.</p><p>He takes a step closer. It's perfectly safe to do it. The manor's roof doesn't have much of a slope to it, not over here; that's exactly why Bruce likes to climb up to this part.</p><p>The guy doesn't move. He glances around, kind of frantic, like he's searching for something—like he's expecting something to happen, waiting for it.</p><p>But whatever it is, it doesn't come, and Bruce has the time to take a good look at him.</p><p>It's impossible. Isn't it? It's got to be impossible.</p><p>"It's you," he hears himself say. "Isn't it? It's you. Clark."</p><p>And he's right. He must be right, because Clark jerks at the sound of his own name coming out of Bruce's mouth, flinches and takes a step back, still holding his hands out like he's trying to ward Bruce off or something.</p><p>"Christ," Bruce murmurs. "You were real."</p><p>Clark looks at him sharply. His eyes are just as blue as Bruce remembered. Bluer, maybe.</p><p>"Yeah," he says. "I was real. I'm—I'm real." And then he stops, and makes a face. "I probably shouldn't be saying that to you, though."</p><p>"You didn't want me to remember you at all," Bruce says.</p><p>He doesn't exactly mean for it to come out as accusing as it does. It hadn't bothered him when he was nine. It hadn't meant much of anything to him, except that Clark was definitely weird. He'd at least known it was better not to tell anybody about it, not to start going on about some stranger he'd met in a cave he'd already claimed not to have fallen into. He'd just been pleased to have a secret. Something he could keep all to himself, something that was his and his alone.</p><p>He'd thought about it a lot, on the worst nights after that. The way Clark had looked at him, like he hurt the same way Bruce hurt. <i>That's awful, Bruce. I'm sorry. I'd have run away, too.</i> Like he understood.</p><p>But then Bruce had gotten older, and other things had started to jump out at him. He grew less sure of his own memory—Clark couldn't really have <em>flown</em> Bruce up out of that cave. Right? And Bruce had been an idiot to think it meant anything that Clark had used Alfred's name, but, hell, he'd been nine. It was no wonder his critical reasoning skills had tapped out a couple rounds early.</p><p>He'd gotten stuck on Clark's face, the look on it when Bruce had told Clark his name. He'd said something about how it wasn't supposed to have happened like that, and the thing where he hoped Bruce forgot about it. Like somehow he'd ended up in that cave, right when Bruce had fallen into it, by <em>mistake</em>.</p><p>Which was pretty fucking weird, Bruce had decided. As if he could've taken a wrong turn somewhere, and wandered in there?</p><p>But now he's back, and it seems just as unintentional. And that flash of light. That happened last time, too. That was—Bruce suppresses a bone-deep shudder—what had set off the bats.</p><p>"I'm not sure this is supposed to be happening," Clark is saying. "It's not that I <em>want</em> you to forget, but you have to. Don't you?" He stops again, mouth twisting ruefully. "Then again, I guess it isn't really out of the question that this did happen, and you just didn't tell me. That's got you written all over it, actually."</p><p>Bruce stares at him, and turns that over. "You know me," he says slowly.</p><p>Clark goes still. "I, uh. Sure. Sure. You're that kid, that kid from last time. Of course I know you."</p><p>"Wow," Bruce says. "You're a terrible liar."</p><p>Clark covers his face with his hand, and doesn't say anything.</p><p>"You're from the future," Bruce reasons. "You have to be."</p><p>"No comment," Clark mutters, from behind his palm, and then rubs his eyes. "Look, you—what are you even doing up here?"</p><p>Bruce flushes, gritting his teeth, and looks away. "Nothing much," he makes himself say.</p><p>The silence stretches.</p><p>"All right," Clark says quietly. "It's just that last time this happened, you were in trouble. You needed help. And I—" He stops. "If there's something I can—"</p><p>"No," Bruce snaps. "Not this time."</p><p>He turns around, puts his back to Clark. Stupid, probably. But if Clark wanted to shove him off the roof, he could've done it right when he got here, when Bruce was still busy gawking at him.</p><p>If Clark wanted Bruce dead or something, he could've done it when Bruce was nine.</p><p>Bruce drops down to the edge of the roof, props one foot up and lets the other one dangle. And after a moment he hears footsteps crossing the roof behind him.</p><p>So Clark can't fly after all. Unless—</p><p>Unless he wanted to make sure Bruce could hear him coming. But why would he?</p><p>Clark doesn't touch him or anything. Just comes and sits down, a few feet away: arm's length, a little further. There, but not crowding, not trying to get inside Bruce's space.</p><p>"Nice view up here."</p><p>Bruce makes a noncommittal noise in his throat.</p><p>"I had a spot like this at home," Clark adds, as if Bruce asked. "Up on the barn. When I was mad, or upset, or I just didn't want to be around anybody, that's where I'd go." He lets out a little huff of breath, a fraction of a laugh. "Which I guess means if I'm going to draw the parallel, I should take a hint and shut up and leave you to it, right?"</p><p>Bruce looks out across the fields, the distant woods, the bay faint and sparkling in the haze even further off, and doesn't answer.</p><p>Clark doesn't move, doesn't stand up again, doesn't leave. It's a warm afternoon, the breeze ruffling Bruce's hair insistently where it flops across his forehead. He risks a sidelong glance, and okay, his nine-year-old memory was right: Clark's is darker than his, curlier.</p><p>"I yelled at Alfred," he blurts.</p><p>Clark looks over at him.</p><p>"I shouldn't have. I know I shouldn't have. He was just—being Alfred." Bruce bites down on the inside of his cheek. "It was stupid. It was <em>cruel</em>. I didn't mean to be that way. I don't want to be that way."</p><p>Except he already is. Isn't he? Isn't that what it means, if he lost control of himself and that's what came out? Alfred doesn't deserve that. Alfred shouldn't have to put up with that. Bruce is already a burden, a pain in his ass. He must be happy it's almost Bruce's birthday, that Bruce is almost eighteen. Bruce won't be his problem anymore, after that. He'll probably make a break for it, go straight back to England at the first opportunity—</p><p>"Hey," Clark says.</p><p>Bruce sucks in a breath, blows it out, and ignores the hot prickling in the corners of his eyes.</p><p>"I'm not saying one way or another. I just want to be clear about that. But you've gone ahead and decided I'm from the future. Which means as far as you're concerned, you should take it seriously when I tell you—you aren't. You aren't that way. Okay?"</p><p>Tentative, uncertain relief expands, light and luminous, in Bruce's chest. "You've got to be kidding," Bruce mutters, instead of acknowledging it. "Future me knows better than to tell you anything I want to keep secret, right?"</p><p>Clark doesn't answer.</p><p>Bruce looks at him, and for a second it's—he's got a weird look on his face. Like he's hurt again, somewhere Bruce can't see, some way Bruce doesn't understand. He looks bitter, and sad, and tired.</p><p>"You know better than to tell me much of anything," he says at last, really low. "But I'm trying to change that."</p><p>"I thought you said I wasn't cruel," Bruce says, "in the future."</p><p>Clark turns to meet his eyes, looking startled. "What? No, it's—you're not being <em>cruel</em>, jesus. You just keep a lot of things to yourself. But it's not because you're trying to hurt anyone." He pauses. "The opposite, actually, if I had to guess. You think it's better that way."</p><p>Well. That makes more sense, Bruce thinks.</p><p>"You think a lot of stupid things," Clark says.</p><p>Bruce gives him a narrow-eyed little scowl.</p><p>But for some reason, all that does is make Clark smile at him.</p><p>"You also still make that face sometimes," Clark observes, and then he clears his throat. "Look, whatever you did or said, I can promise you Alfred's not as mad as you think he is. All right? It's going to be fine. You don't have to keep hiding from him up here."</p><p>Bruce opens his mouth, ready to explain to Clark exactly how far wrong he is if he thinks Bruce is hiding from anything—and then he stops short, gripped by epiphany. "Wait," he says. "Wait a minute. You know Alfred."</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"You know Alfred," Bruce repeats. "You did last time, too. Except you've never met him. You didn't stick around long enough for it back then, and I've never seen you anywhere else, until now. But you know him. He—he doesn't leave."</p><p>Clark's face changes. "No," he agrees, gentle in a way that would piss Bruce off all over again if he weren't too busy being relieved. "No, he doesn't leave. He wouldn't, Bruce. He loves you."</p><p>Bruce's ears get hot. "Nobody asked you," he says sharply, and then—</p><p>And then he has to flinch, cover his eyes, against another sudden bright flare of light.</p><p>When it's gone, so is Clark.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>It's going to be fine, Clark tells himself, squeezing his eyes shut. He just has to give the box a chance to—to refine its calculations, to recalibrate.</p><p>This isn't what he intended to come back for. Not for nine-year-old Bruce and his huge sad eyes, his round face; not for—what must that have been? Bruce at sixteen, seventeen?—teenage Bruce and his floppy hair, the painfully endearing transparency of an unwelcoming attitude he hadn't learned to actually hide anything behind.</p><p>But Clark clearly is traveling through time. It doesn't matter how long it takes. This isn't something he can be late for, as long as he gets there at all.</p><p>It just <em>feels</em> like it is. It feels urgent; it feels unbearable. It feels like Bruce is lying there waiting for him, bleeding, broken. But that's just because the last memory of his own Bruce won't stop dogging his heels. That version of Bruce isn't real, not yet.</p><p>The box is trying to help him. It's just going to take a few tries, that's all—</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>The bottle's almost empty.</p><p>Bruce tips it back anyway. Waste not, want not—never mind that he wants so much more than he'll ever be able to say, and is surrounded by endless waste, is undeniably and thoroughly wasted himself, in every possible sense of the word.</p><p>He's been drinking too long for the last sip to burn going down. It barely tastes like anything at all. But that's fine. That's how he knows it's working.</p><p>He straightens out his arm, sideways, and lets the bottle slide out of it. He's kind of hoping for a nice loud smash, but he gets a muted clonk instead, an undramatic little rattle.</p><p>Oh, of course. The Persian rug. He should have realized.</p><p>He huffs a laugh at the ceiling, and tips his head back—over the edge of the couch, diagonal, feet propped up on the back of it. He lets his hand trail down toward the floor. Maybe if he's lucky, he can reach the bottle without having to get up. Pick a wall, and hurl it properly. Give himself a second chance.</p><p>As if he's earned one; as if anything he's ever done in his life could be meaningful enough to merit one. As if he's got any fucking use for one, when the only thing he'd change if he could hadn't been up to him at all—</p><p>He jerks, reaching up to shield his eyes and flinching from the hard white flash of light that fills the room, and then squints, upside down, at the figure it leaves behind.</p><p>"Oh," he says. "You again."</p><p>"Bruce," Clark says slowly. "You look—awful."</p><p>Bruce constructs an exaggerated look of dismay. The subtleties are probably lost on Clark, though, since Bruce's head is still upside down. "Ouch. Harsh words, Bullshit Time-Travel Man. Harsh words."</p><p>Clark takes a step closer, another, lifts a hand as if to reach out and then seems to think better of it. Hard to blame him. Bruce spilled some rum on himself about an hour ago, and there's a puddle or two of vodka on the floor from when he decided to try sticking his head off the edge of the sofa and pouring it into his mouth with his eyes closed. He's long since gone nose-deaf, of course. Used to it. But Clark's probably getting the full impact, ripely seasoned.</p><p>"What happened?"</p><p>"Hm? Oh, nothing like that," Bruce says with a bright easy laugh, flapping a hand at Clark's face. Clark's mouth is tight, flat, brows twisting themselves up, big blue eyes serious and concerned.</p><p>Nobody looks at Bruce like that. Alfred knows better; and nobody else gives enough of a shit.</p><p>"Christ, you look like somebody died," Bruce adds.</p><p>He does it on purpose. Clark was there, when he was nine—probably remembers what Bruce said better than Bruce does. By comparison, barely anything had been wrong at all, when Bruce was seventeen; but that's still half their sample size to date.</p><p>It's snide. It's uncalled-for. Bruce is expecting Clark to be pissed off, or maybe just disapproving.</p><p>He's not expecting Clark to flinch.</p><p>He stays where he is for a second, and then slowly rolls over, to the edge of the couch—right side up, and he rides out the head rush, doesn't let nausea or the lurching unsteadiness of the room get the better of him.</p><p>He hadn't had much in the way of questions about Clark, when he was nine, except where he'd come from, where he'd gone; idle curiosity, straightforward. He hadn't been sure Clark had ever been there at all, by seventeen, until Clark had been standing right in front of him, exactly the way Bruce remembered him.</p><p>That had been enough to convince him. He didn't understand it, but he wasn't hallucinating it, he wasn't making it up. And Clark had to be from the future. Clark's own attempts to pretend otherwise had been laughable at best.</p><p>But this—this is the first time it's occurred to Bruce to wonder just what it is that's going on in the future Clark comes from, what it is that might have made him start time-traveling in the first place. Maybe it was an accident; maybe it's involuntary.</p><p>But maybe not.</p><p>He lets his eyes fall shut, and digs a knuckle into one of them. Too bad that thought's occurring to him while he's so drunk he can't stand up straight. No way he's going to be able to pry any answers out of Clark, like this.</p><p>"Relax," he slurs instead, wishing dimly that he'd started slowing down about two hours earlier than he did. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'm celebrating."</p><p>"Celebrating," Clark repeats, dubious and only a little unsteady, and Bruce opens his eyes in time to see Clark nudging an empty bottle with his foot, not quite hard enough to make it clink against the ones next to it.</p><p>"Graduated," Bruce says.</p><p>"College?"</p><p>"Law school." Bruce smiles; it probably comes off like the twisted parody it is.</p><p>He'd thought it would help. He'd thought it would change something. Feel different, real, meaningful. The business degree that had preceded it had been exactly what was expected of him, and it had felt like it. He'd wanted more.</p><p>"Law school," Clark repeats, quiet, leading.</p><p>Bruce squeezes his eyes shut. "It doesn't matter. None of it matters." He gropes, one-handed, catches a bottle by the neck—shoves himself up with the other hand, and relishes the effort, the bunching motion through his shoulders, as he heaves it at the wall. <em>There's</em> the smash he was looking for. "None of it makes any goddamn <em>difference</em>."</p><p>Funny: Clark doesn't flinch from the impact, from the crash of shattering glass. Should've been worse than half a dozen words, but to him it seems it isn't.</p><p>Bruce is halfway up already. He manages to get a foot on the floor, heave himself up from the couch, and he only sways a little bit despite the way the rug is tilting back and forth under him.</p><p>"But never mind," he says, and smiles—a better one, this time. A nicer one. The one that makes people smile back at him. Bruce Wayne, always ready for a good time. That's him. "Never mind. That's not what you came here for. That's not what anybody comes to me for."</p><p>"Bruce—"</p><p>Bruce lurches forward, tips; catches himself with a hand on Clark's shoulder. It's a good shoulder. Broad, strong. He wets his lips and squeezes, the barest press of his fingertips, just to feel the sturdy muscle of it.</p><p>He'd noticed, at seventeen. He hadn't been trying to, but he had. Clark's hair, his eyes. He'd still been trying to tell himself that it was nothing but a—an aesthetic appreciation, back then. That he looked at men the way he did because he was drawing natural comparisons, because he wanted to understand and admire and emulate manliness.</p><p>He knows better, now. College had been educational in more ways than one.</p><p>"Doesn't make a difference," he murmurs, absent, swaying closer—running his thumb up the side of Clark's neck, brushing the curls at the nape of it. "Never will."</p><p>Clark swallows. Bruce watches his throat work.</p><p>"Come on," Bruce says, coaxing. "I'm good at this." He smiles wider, lets his eyes get heavy—laughs a little, out of one side of his mouth. "Not good for much, but I'm good at this."</p><p>But Clark doesn't take the cue. Something's happening to his face, and it isn't any of the things it's supposed to be, isn't a flush of heat or wide eyes or the shocked anger Bruce would have expected to precede a slap.</p><p>Bruce decides to ignore it. Moves his hand up, catches Clark's chin with his thumb, and then—</p><p>It's like he blinks, and he's back on the sofa, toppling one last inch and then landing on it, a fractional bounce. Clark's hand is spread across his chest, and he doesn't know when it got there.</p><p>"You do make a difference," Clark says quietly. "You <em>do</em>, Bruce. You—" He stops, mouth twisting wryly.</p><p>"What?" Bruce says.</p><p>"You aren't going to think this is funny, later," Clark admits. "But it's true anyway. I wouldn't be alive right now if it weren't for you."</p><p>Bruce stares up at him. That doesn't seem likely; what the hell is Bruce Wayne ever going to do to save anyone's life?</p><p>But the way Clark's looking at him, those blue blue eyes—it's weirdly hard not to believe it, when he says it like that.</p><p>"You make a difference," Clark repeats. "Don't forget that."</p><p>Bruce swallows. Reaches up, belated, unthinking, to put a hand over the back of Clark's; and now, <em>now</em>, Clark looks down at him with a flush climbing into his cheeks, his mouth parted.</p><p>"Don't forget, Bruce," Clark says, hushed.</p><p>The sudden light is searing, blinding. Bruce's head throbs in protest. Clark's gone.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>So—he makes a difference, apparently. Presumably not with drunken binges and record-setting hangovers; probably not by ending up a fat smug CEO-in-name-only who leaves all the actual work to other people.</p><p>He makes a difference. He's just got to figure out how.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>A few tries. Or maybe more than a few.</p><p>Maybe—</p><p>Maybe it's not a mistake, Clark thinks, eyes closed against the light. Maybe the box is doing exactly what he asked it to do.</p><p>
  <i>I want to save him. I want to fix this. I need more time.</i>
</p><p>He'd just meant Bruce's death. Or at least he'd meant to mean that. But everything he's thought, everything he's felt since he watched that alien ship crash into the waterfront—it's all inevitably been tangled up with everything <em>else</em> he's ever thought or felt about Bruce. All the things he hadn't said, all the things he doesn't know, all the questions he's never asked.</p><p>And now the box is giving him the chance to understand. The chance to be there for Bruce, in the moments when no one else could.</p><p>Does that count for anything, when pretty much the only thing he's done is talk? If he gets the chance to actually change something—should he?</p><p>Maybe the real question is whether he can bear not to. He tried that once, with Dad. He tried to be cautious, to be careful, to avoid making a dangerous mistake; he's done nothing but regret it ever since.</p><p>And depending on where the box sends him next, maybe he's going to be able to spare Bruce the same—</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bruce fits the last pane of glass into place with a click, and steps back.</p><p>It isn't enough, of course. What could be? But with satisfaction beyond his reach, with a memorial commensurate to the loss undeniably impossible to achieve—this is the next best option. Indelible. Unignorable. A confrontation, a challenge. A reminder of the costs of failure, inaction, indecision.</p><p>He looks into the case. The case, appropriately, reflects his own half-darkened image back at him: the lit contours of his face visible, the rest fallen away in shadow.</p><p>And then, abruptly, a flare of brilliance whites it all out.</p><p>He turns on his heel before it's even over, half-blinded by afterimages. "<em>You</em>," he bites out.</p><p>Because it is, of course, Clark.</p><p>Of course—as if anything about Clark and his visitations makes sense, as if he can be predicted or understood. Bruce gave up on attempting to analyze or construct a pattern out of the intervals to date several years ago; three events isn't much of a sample size, and the occasional conversation with what was functionally a cryptic, time-traveling, human-shaped Jiminy Cricket no longer held pride of place as the weirdest thing that had ever happened to Bruce.</p><p>He had still thought about Clark intermittently. It was difficult not to. Difficult not to wonder where he was, what he was doing—whether he would show up again, and when. Whether their interactions fell in sequence for him the same way they did for Bruce; whether they lay separated by intervals of years, or not.</p><p>Whether he ever thought about Bruce in return.</p><p>But now—now it's impossible to give half a shit about any of it. Now there's no room in Bruce for anything but yawning emptiness, relentless furious grief, a free-ranging anger with no acceptable target except himself.</p><p>"Bruce," Clark says, startled, puzzled, hand coming up as if to reach out. And then his gaze skips over Bruce's shoulder, and his breath catches audibly in his throat. "Oh, god. I'm too late. Bruce—"</p><p>"You're too late," Bruce agrees grimly, and another stride and he's there. Hands at Clark's chest, twisting his fingers into the fabric of Clark's shirt; always the same goddamn shirt. He'd never been able to decide whether that constituted evidence or cover: whether it meant Clark had no opportunity to change it, was living their interactions one to the next, a stone skipping along the surface of the pond of Bruce's existence, or was deliberately disguising any alteration, any suggestion of the passage of time on his end.</p><p>At least they're in the Cave, now. At least this time, Bruce is going to have him on camera.</p><p>Clark catches Bruce's wrists, and then comes up against the wall. He doesn't look like it hurts, doesn't look afraid or upset to be pinned there, even though Bruce has a few inches on him now, isn't a child or seventeen or drunk.</p><p>"I was going to try," he says, soft, eyes wet. "I was going to try. I wouldn't have let him die if I could help it. I'd have said something. I didn't know—I didn't know it would be too late already."</p><p>"Shut <em>up</em>," Bruce grits out, and tugs him away from the wall, the better to shove him into it again.</p><p>His head cracks backward into the stone this time. But he doesn't wince, doesn't even grimace. His hands are closed loosely around Bruce's wrists, thumbs resting without pressure over the veins, over the delicate bones he isn't making even the slightest effort to break.</p><p>"I'm sorry," he says.</p><p>Bruce squeezes his eyes shut, jams his knuckles that much harder into Clark's chest.</p><p>"Don't," he hears himself say.</p><p>But Clark doesn't listen to him. "Bruce," he murmurs again, and lets go with one hand—touches Bruce's shoulder, the nape of his neck, his jaw. "Bruce, I'm sorry."</p><p>Bruce's hands are shaking. Because he's got them clenched so tightly in Clark's shirt. That's all it is.</p><p>"Don't," he says again, but it comes out hoarse, strained. His throat aches. He can't breathe.</p><p>And then—then Clark does push back, at last, but it isn't to free himself. It's just to press closer. Bruce jerks away, stuttered, uneven; his fists against Clark's chest aren't pinning Clark anymore, somehow, but holding him off instead.</p><p>"<em>Don't</em>—"</p><p>"It shouldn't have happened like this," Clark says, low and soft, and far, far too close. "I'd have fixed it if I could have. I'm sorry."</p><p>Bruce tenses, but he can't pull free. Clark is warm, and strong, and utterly surrounding.</p><p>"He loved you," Clark adds, quieter still. "You did everything you could, and you loved him, and he knew it."</p><p>Bruce makes a harsh incredulous sound, and screws his eyes shut tighter. "You never even <em>met</em> him."</p><p>"No," Clark agrees. "But I've met you."</p><p>Bruce twists his face away, his body. He can't bear this. How can he bear this?</p><p>Clark doesn't let go.</p><p>And then, beyond Bruce's eyelids, there's a bright light, a rush of white noise, and Clark's weight, his warmth, his hands, are gone.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>"Come on!" Clark shouts, into the formless blazing light. "What the hell is any of this for if I can't even <em>do</em> anything—"</p><p>He can't keep going. The words won't come. He bites the inside of his cheek, hard.</p><p>God. He knew it had been bad. Of course it had been bad. But at the same time, it had been so hard to imagine Bruce as Clark knew him best—implacable, immovable; carved from Gotham granite, fully formed—flayed raw like that. Broken open, crumbling apart. In pain.</p><p>And after a jump like that, how much time does Clark have left? The mother box hadn't given him the chance to save Dick. But surely, <em>surely</em>, it'll let him fix what's coming next. Surely that's why it took him so far back to begin with. To give him a chance to understand what he's dealing with, to give him a foundation: a Bruce who knows him, who has to realize by now that the last thing Clark wants is to hurt him.</p><p>Surely, if Clark's going to be able to change anything, it'll be—</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bruce rewinds the footage, starts from the beginning. Marks a few more timestamps, makes a note. Reduces the playback speed, and then increases it again. Rewinds.</p><p>The alien, captured from almost every angle, at every conceivable quality, is plastered across every single one of the monitors in front of him.</p><p>If he might ever plausibly claim to be expecting a sudden sourceless blaze of white light, it's now.</p><p>He pauses the footage with a keystroke, and stands.</p><p>"And here I thought," he says evenly, "you'd know better than to come back again."</p><p>The alien's brow furrows. "What?" he says, as if uncertain. "Bruce—"</p><p>He stops short. He's seen the monitors. He recognizes what's on them.</p><p>He knows when he is, now.</p><p>He looks sick.</p><p>"So it is you," Bruce says.</p><p>The alien swallows hard, once, twice. "I—Bruce, wait—"</p><p>"It honestly hadn't occurred to me," Bruce tells him, achieving something that's at least close to a conversational tone. "All those years, all those coincidences. You, showing up again and again. At the moments when I was—" and it's hardly an admission, is it? It must have been deliberate, tactical. It must have been on purpose. "When I was vulnerable. Open to suggestion, easy to influence. Rescuing me as a child, old enough to remember it but not old enough to suspect you of anything in particular. Coming to me when I was alone, uncertain, to tell me everything was going to be all right. Cultivating trust—"</p><p>"<em>No</em>," the alien says, voice cracking, eyes wet. "No, that was never—I wasn't. Bruce, please."</p><p>"You're one of them," Bruce bites out. "You were monitoring me. Interfering. Attempting to encourage a sense of sympathy."</p><p>"Jesus," the alien says raggedly, covering his face with his hands.</p><p>"I do something, don't I? That's why you went back. I stop you. Somehow, I figure out how to stop you."</p><p>The alien doesn't answer.</p><p>"Not exactly an efficient strategy," Bruce evaluates coolly. "You should have snapped my neck in that cave when I was nine. Unless you can't, I suppose. Too direct an effect on the chain of events?"</p><p>"I wouldn't have," the alien says. "Not ever, no matter what you did. I'm not here to hurt you, and I'm not here to—to <em>brainwash</em> you." He stops, and the look on his face changes to something Bruce can't name. He's always been the same; every time he's appeared to Bruce, he's been the same. No change in appearance, no change in age. But his eyes—</p><p>He looks young, suddenly. Young, and tired. Resigned.</p><p>Then again, this is probably the first time Bruce has been the visibly older of the two of them. That must be the difference.</p><p>"But you aren't going to listen to me," the alien says, after a moment. "You have no reason to listen to me. I understand that." He rubs a hand across his mouth, and shakes his head. "I thought you were stubborn. I thought you were dangerous. I thought you were looking for an excuse. But if you thought—if you believed all along that your whole life, I'd been—jesus." He laughs, a soft breath, more bitter than amused. "Jesus, no wonder you hated me so much."</p><p>"You can't stop me," Bruce tells him. "No matter what you do, I won't let you stop me."</p><p>The alien's eyes fall shut. "I know," he says. "I know you won't."</p><p>And then, in a flash of that too-familiar light, he's gone.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>God. He shouldn't have done this. He should never have tried. He's just making it worse. He's only making everything worse. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He wasn't expecting it to be like this.</p><p>Clark curls in on himself, weightless, suspended, and wipes at his wet face. Maybe the box is trying to tell him something, trying to make him understand.</p><p>Maybe he isn't going to be able to fix anything at all.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bruce is standing in the house, looking out at the lake, when it happens.</p><p>For a long moment, he doesn't dare believe it. He can't convince himself to turn around. It's raining, hard; he's heard a few distant cracks of thunder. It was just lightning. It must have been lightning.</p><p>But hope springs eternal. Even here, even now, in him: bitter, desperate, sharp-edged, and yet he finds himself clinging to it anyway, the alternative unimaginably worse.</p><p>There's a chance. Isn't there? Superman had—had never shown any sign of remembering, had never said a word to him about it. Not that that's diagnostic, strictly speaking. But there's a chance. There's got to be a chance.</p><p>He draws a long slow breath, and turns his head, and looks over his shoulder.</p><p>God. It's Kent. It's <em>Kent</em>.</p><p>Bruce swallows hard.</p><p>He looks just the way he always does, just the way Bruce remembers him. There's no hole in his chest. He's standing tall, breathing, alive. Hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking out uncertainly from behind those goddamn glasses.</p><p>"Not planning to strangle me with your bare hands?" he says after a moment, mouth slanting tentatively, eyes wary.</p><p>"Kent," Bruce hears himself say.</p><p>Kent's expression flickers. "Bruce—"</p><p>Bruce closes his eyes, clenches his fists, and tries dimly not to sway in place.</p><p>It's true, then. It's true. Kent's from the future—from <em>further</em> in the future. Wherever it is he's traveling from, Bruce hasn't reached it, not coming at it the long way.</p><p>Superman is dead. But he clearly isn't going to stay that way.</p><p>"Whoa, hey," Kent says, stepping forward, catching Bruce by the shoulder with a steadying hand. "Are you okay?"</p><p>Is <em>Bruce</em> okay. Christ.</p><p>"I'm fine," Bruce croaks, and makes himself look.</p><p>Kent is staring at him, transfixed. "But I'm not, am I?" he murmurs.</p><p>Bruce lets his eyes fall shut again. "No. No, you aren't." He clears his throat, once and then again. It's not helping as much as it should. "You—you told me once that I—that you wouldn't be alive if it weren't for me."</p><p>"Yeah," Kent murmurs. "I did."</p><p>"You were right," Bruce informs him hoarsely. "It's not funny."</p><p>Kent laughs, and doesn't let go of him. "It's a little funny," he insists, and then he stops. Bruce can't bring himself to look, but it doesn't matter; he can hear Kent's throat click as he swallows. "You didn't know. You thought I was gone."</p><p>"I couldn't be sure." Bruce shakes his head, unseeingly puts out a hand, palm spread across Kent's chest. "I had no way to tell. It could have been an ability you'd always had; or maybe you were using the ship. The origin point had to be after we'd met. That was the only insurance I had—"</p><p>And he'd squandered it. He'd squandered it recklessly, certain that he understood Kent's motives. The moment he'd looked up, on Black Zero Day, and seen what he'd seen—the moment he'd understood that he recognized one of the aliens, and had realized why—it had felt like epiphany. It had all fallen into place at once. Every question he'd ever had about Clark and found himself unable to answer, the mystery of Clark's identity and Clark's ability and why on earth it had been Bruce he'd appeared to: it had all been apparent, obvious, undeniable.</p><p>Or at least he'd believed it had been. He'd believed it had been, and the heights of his fury, his determination, his paranoia, had only been driven higher by it.</p><p>It hadn't just been about the danger, and it hadn't just been about a threat to humanity. It had been terrifyingly and unbearably personal, a betrayal on a level Bruce could barely stand to articulate to himself.</p><p>Because he had <em>liked</em> Clark, god help him. Clark had helped him, had been kind to him, had come back again and again. Bruce had trusted him, insofar as it was possible to trust a time-traveling stranger whose appearances in your life could be counted on one hand.</p><p>He'd thought about it all the time. He'd meet Clark, sooner or later. He'd known he would; and he'd wondered how it was going to happen, how he'd know. Where, when. Who Clark was, where he came from.</p><p>All the scenarios he'd ever come up with, all the possibilities he'd ever considered, and nothing even remotely like Black Zero had been among them.</p><p>And, deeper than his belief in the threat the alien presented, deeper than his determination to develop countermeasures, deeper even than his fury and grief by proxy over the casualties, he had been—</p><p>—Christ, he'd been <em>hurt</em>. As simple as that. He'd been stung, cut to the bone. He'd been in agony, unable to acknowledge it and at the same time unable to do anything but reflexively, mindlessly attempt to respond in kind: to deal a blow that felt proportional to the one he'd been dealt, even if he couldn't admit it.</p><p>"It's all right," Kent says gently.</p><p>"I didn't know whether I'd ever see you again," Bruce says.</p><p>"Well," Kent says, after a moment. "Here I am."</p><p>Bruce levels a steady look at him, but can't maintain it. Because—god, it's true. Here he is. Proof incarnate that Bruce gets this right, sooner or later.</p><p>It's strange, unfamiliar, to be handed confirmation of not a fear, but a hope.</p><p>Dizzying. Disorienting. But Bruce is willing to learn how to live with it.</p><p>He swallows. He's staring at Kent; he can't stop.</p><p>"So I—I figure it out. I get you back."</p><p>And Kent smiles at him, and clasps the nape of his neck, squeezes reassuringly tight. "Yeah," he says. "You do. Don't give up, Bruce. You'll get there. I promise."</p><p>He vanishes, of course. He always does.</p><p>This time, Bruce almost doesn't mind.</p><p>He'll be back, after all. Bruce will get him back. He just has to figure out how.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Clark hadn't known what to expect, where the box might take him next. To Luthor's party, maybe. To wherever Bruce had been, watching that Congressional hearing, seeing the Capitol explode. Or maybe that night on the waterfront, Batman lurking, waiting for that shipment of kryptonite to arrive. The fight; either of the fights.</p><p>But that—that was—</p><p>God. So close to his own Bruce, so familiar. He'd almost forgotten, searching for fragments of the Bruce he knew in seventeen-year-olds and twenty-four-year-olds—but this time it had been the Bruce he knew best, or close to it. The hair, the clothes, the way he held himself. The lake house. His eyes.</p><p>Clark swallows. For a moment, the way Bruce had swayed in, the solid heat of him pressing close, had made him think of something else.</p><p>He shouldn't dwell on the memory. Bruce had been drunk, drunk and miserable and frustrated. Clark isn't doing this for the chance to kiss Bruce, he's doing it to save his goddamn life—</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bruce makes conversation, readily, mildly. Pleasantly. He smiles—not too wide, but not strained either. He succeeds in clapping Clark amiably on the back, in strolling toward the house beside him. He doesn't scream, and he doesn't weep, and he doesn't fall to his knees.</p><p>There are boxes to carry. He helps. He manages to refuse Martha Kent's invitation to enter the house for refreshments, making an ambiguous gesture toward his jacket pocket that he hopes distantly will be interpreted as relating somehow or other to his phone.</p><p>He steps away. He walks, with an even, steady pace, around the back of the house, out of view.</p><p>And then he puts a hand out and finds the wall, crumples only a little bit against it, and presses the back of the opposite wrist, the broad joint in his thumb, to his forehead.</p><p>Christ.</p><p>His breath is coming too fast. He can't control his face. He doesn't know why this is—why this is happening now. The thing he wanted to fix, the thing he <em>needed</em> to fix, is fixed. Clark doesn't even seem to hate him for it, as far as he can tell. That's good.</p><p>It's just strange, that's all. It's just strange to look at him like this, almost the version of himself that Bruce knows best, and yet without comprehension, unknowing, unaware.</p><p>Given the state he's in, the acuteness of his desire not to be seen like this, Bruce probably should have been expecting the flash of light.</p><p>"Bruce," Clark says quietly.</p><p>Bruce makes himself look up.</p><p>Clark's taken a half-step toward him, is watching him with searching eyes—and only after Bruce has met that gaze does he glance to the side, look around himself and blink.</p><p>"Bruce, this is my mother's house."</p><p>"Yes," Bruce agrees, "it is."</p><p>"This is—I remember this day," Clark says, and looks at him again, mouth slanting in a sudden sweet smile. "So this is where you went. I wondered, but I didn't think you'd take it kindly if I—" He gestures meaningfully to his eyes. "—looked."</p><p>"You noticed," Bruce says.</p><p>Something in Clark's expression softens; something in his gaze turns warmer, raw and tentative. "Of course I noticed."</p><p>Bruce swallows. His heart is pounding. His throat feels tight. He should look away from Clark, he knows it, but he can't.</p><p>He shouldn't say it. It's stupid, selfish. It doesn't matter—how can it matter, in comparison to Clark, resurrected, returned from the grave? All the gifts Bruce has already been given, all the mercy that has already undeservedly showered down upon him, and yet he has the gall to find himself struggling with it?</p><p>"You don't remember."</p><p>It grits its way out like gravel. His teeth ache. Clark doesn't understand, he can tell—and then does, comprehension sweeping visibly across his face.</p><p>Bruce did well. He must have, if Clark is only now coming to this particular realization. He must have reacted in a way that didn't strike Clark as unreasonable; he must have achieved a facsimile of easy friendliness.</p><p>He must have managed to leash all his desperate intensity, the too-telling depth and profundity of his sheer fucking relief. He barely knows Clark. This Clark, the Clark that co-occupies his present. And this Clark—</p><p>This Clark barely knows him. This Clark remembers none of it, has <em>experienced</em> none of it. Didn't see him panicking at nine, sulky and uncertain at seventeen, drunk and existentially void at twenty-four. Doesn't know about Dick at all, most likely, and certainly never refused to yield to the pressure of Bruce's fists against his chest, never held on and didn't let go and said again and again how sorry he was.</p><p>This Clark has no idea why Bruce feared and loathed him with such particular viciousness; this Clark doesn't understand how Bruce dreaded and hoped in equal measure, can't grasp the paradoxical certainty that had driven Bruce to raise him from the dead, knowing it would work but not when or how or what it might take.</p><p>A handful of moments, that's all. And yet each marked Bruce indelibly, altered him irrevocably. And this Clark—this Clark didn't see them, wasn't there, and it's impossible, unthinkable, to endeavor to somehow work out how to share them with him now.</p><p>"Jesus," Clark breathes. He laughs, a hysterical little huff, and shakes his head, reaches up to rub a hand across his face. "Jesus, all this time. I thought you just didn't like me. I thought—but I couldn't stop trying. And I didn't know. God, it must have been so hard for you—"</p><p>"How long?" Bruce interrupts, sharp, because Christ, he can't listen to this.</p><p>And Clark looks at him, and bites his lip, which is an answer even before he admits, "A while. Not that long, not really. But it—" His mouth twists, wry awareness of the exquisite ridiculousness of the words that follow: "It takes some time."</p><p>Bruce lets his eyes fall shut.</p><p>They do form a team. They must. It makes sense. That's why Clark knows him, is willing to extend him so much patience, knows about Alfred—about Dick. They form a team; they work together.</p><p>And somehow, he survives this. Somehow, he contains it. He keeps it to himself. Isn't that what Clark told him?</p><p><i>You know better than to tell me much of anything. But not because you're trying to hurt anyone.</i> Hurt me—that's what Clark hadn't said, the unspoken words Bruce at seventeen had utterly failed to hear. <i>You think it's better that way.</i></p><p>It is. It must be. This is—he can't tell Clark this. He doesn't know where he would begin, and even if he did, he wouldn't be able to get it out, wouldn't have any hope of making Clark understand what it meant. What it means.</p><p>He has to wait. He has to wait, and sooner or later, Clark will catch up with him.</p><p>The wall is solid beneath his hand, his palm still spread out against it, bracing. He bites down on the inside of his cheek, and breathes.</p><p>And then a hand touches his face.</p><p>"Bruce," Clark says, very quietly.</p><p>Bruce turns into that hand, helpless—pushes himself clear of the wall, reaches up fumblingly and wraps his fingers around Clark's wrist. He digs his teeth into his lip, fortifying, and makes himself open his eyes. He shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be letting this happen. Around the back of Martha Kent's farmhouse, late afternoon sunshine spilling molten between them; a Clark he isn't going to see again for years, at minimum—</p><p>Clark swallows, throat working visibly, and reaches up with his thumb, catches the corner of Bruce's mouth.</p><p>"I told you," Bruce says, hoarse. "I don't not like you."</p><p>Clark's mouth slants. "I believe you," he whispers, and leans in.</p><p>It's nothing like the half-formed attempt Bruce had made at twenty-four, drunk and despairing. Clark had used the strength, the speed; he knows that now. Clark had stopped him. And now—</p><p>Now it's Clark holding him, touching his face, tipping it down. Clark moving first, Clark's mouth against his. Tentative, closemouthed, but lingering. Clark draws back the barest degree; Bruce doesn't move, doesn't open his eyes, and Clark makes a soft sound in the back of his throat and kisses Bruce again, harder, deeper. God.</p><p>It's a miracle, he thinks dimly, that he is apparently going to manage to exist in the same space as Clark now and then, after this.</p><p>Clark eases away on an indrawn breath, but doesn't go far; brings his temple to rest against Bruce's, cheeks brushing, hand spread out broad and warm along the line of Bruce's jaw. "Sorry," he says, very low, into Bruce's ear.</p><p>"What for?" Bruce murmurs.</p><p>"Because I probably get to do this again, in about ten minutes," Clark admits.</p><p>Bruce feels his mouth quirk, unbidden.</p><p>"I'll live," he says.</p><p>And Clark—Clark goes still against him. "Yeah," he murmurs, holding Bruce briefly tighter. "Yeah, you will."</p><p>Bruce keeps his eyes closed against the flash of light, lets his abruptly empty hands fall; breathes, slow, until he can do it steadily.</p><p>It takes longer than it should. But then—</p><p>But then he'd better get used to waiting.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Clark presses his knuckles into his stinging eyes. Jesus. He shouldn't have done that, he knows he shouldn't have. And yet—</p><p>And yet at the same time, it was irresistible. Just in case, that's what he'd told himself. Because he's close. There can't be more than one or two jumps ahead of him, the way things have been going; closer and closer together, and by now there's less than a year left anyway. And if it doesn't work, if the box dumps him back in the Hall at the exact moment he left—he thought it, and he wanted to have kissed Bruce. He wanted to have kissed Bruce, at least once.</p><p>But he can admit that it doesn't hurt to be aware of what it means to have done it. It can't help but light a spark in him, deep and selfish and even possessive, to think—to think that every time he'd walked into the security room to say good morning to Bruce, every time Bruce had snapped an order at him over League comms, it had been in a world where they had kissed. They had kissed and Bruce had known it. Clark meant it when he apologized: it must have been a ludicrous, distended torture for Bruce, to have that memory when Clark didn't; to be aware of it, to think of it and meet Clark's eyes in passing and know that Clark had no idea.</p><p>Really, Clark thinks, it's no wonder Bruce was a little short with him most of the time.</p><p>"Please," he lets himself say, even though there's nothing listening to him but the light. "<em>Please</em>. You've got to let me save him. He can't—he can't just be gone. Not after all of this. Not when I can do something about it, if you'll just give me the chance."</p><p>Please, he thinks, desperate, eyes wet. Please—</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bruce is dragged back to awareness grudgingly, a step at a time, by the white-hot pain in his side. He coughs, and that makes it flare higher still. He can't move. He keeps his eyes closed, and concentrates on attempting to breathe. Shallowly.</p><p>He's on his side—not the injured side. His head is tipped down against something cool, rough-surfaced: concrete, pavement. He's—</p><p>He's in the armor, but the cowl is gone.</p><p>He tenses up, reflexive, and waits out the wave of agony that follows. There's blood in his mouth.</p><p>That's right. He remembers now. The waterfront is clear; it must be. Clark wouldn't have taken the cowl off him otherwise.</p><p>Clark.</p><p>He forces an eye open. The sky is blurring, smearing, full of light. The ships. Of course. Clark is the reason he isn't bleeding out, and Clark is the reason he didn't drown unceremoniously in the bay. And Bruce sent him back up there, because he wouldn't have gone on his own; Bruce had seen it in his face.</p><p>And now—Bruce laughs, a little, the sound choked tight in the back of his throat.</p><p>Now, Bruce is in the endlessly familiar position of waiting for him.</p><p>He lets his eyes fall shut again. He feels lightheaded, disoriented, dangerously exhausted. Concussion, perhaps, if he'd struck the Batwing's console as it went down. Blood loss, obviously.</p><p>There's a flash of light. There are a lot of flashes of light; but this one is uncomfortably close. If one of the alien ships has slipped past the League and begun firing on Metropolis—</p><p>"<em>Bruce</em>," Clark says, breathless, urgent, touching his head, his face, sliding strong gentle fingers into his hair.</p><p>Bruce blinks. He—lost time? Clark's come back for him already?</p><p>No. The shirt. The shirt; Clark's face, his eyes. The way he's looking at Bruce.</p><p>It's not Clark. It's <em>Clark</em>.</p><p>God. Bruce can't think straight like this.</p><p>"Clark," he hears himself say, and the worst of the desperate furrowed tension in Clark's face eases.</p><p>"Bruce," Clark says again, and leans down, presses their foreheads together even though Bruce's is tacky with a spatter of blood. "It's this. This is why."</p><p>What? This is—</p><p>"This is why I did it. This is why I do it. I'm up there, and I'm—I'm not going to be fast enough. One of the ships gets through, and it crashes into the port, right here."</p><p><i>Christ</i>, Bruce remembers half-hysterically, <i>you look like somebody died.</i></p><p>He'd been an asshole at twenty-four. But also, apparently, right on the money.</p><p>He swallows, once and then again, and turns his face as best he can into Clark's hand, their noses brushing, bumping.</p><p>"But I promised I'd come back for you," Clark says, hushed. "I promised I'd get you out alive. And I will."</p><p>The world whites out, in a flash of light.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Clark hangs on. The light is everywhere, blinding, brighter than before. He can't see anything, can't feel anything—but he didn't let go of Bruce. He hasn't let go of Bruce.</p><p>It has to work. It <em>has</em> to—</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When the world takes shape around him again, Bruce is still there.</p><p>Bruce is still there, but everything else has changed.</p><p>Bruce is lying beneath Clark, exactly the way he was a moment ago: in the Batsuit, bloody, battered, with a hole in his side that Clark doesn't want to look at too closely. But it's not concrete under him anymore. It's—marble.</p><p>Clark makes himself sit up, drags his eyes away from Bruce, and god, he could cry. He might be already.</p><p>They're in the Hall.</p><p>"Clark?"</p><p>Barry.</p><p>"Clark—holy shit," Barry says, eyes wide, and in a flicker, a crackle, he's on his knees next to Clark. "Holy shit, <em>Bruce</em>. Are you—"</p><p>"Fine," Bruce says hoarsely, in blatant brass-balled defiance of the evidence.</p><p>"Holy shit! Wait, are you—what did you even do? How did you find him?"</p><p>"I didn't," Clark admits. "I used the box. I went back."</p><p>"You went. You went, um. Wait. Is this going to, like, destabilize the space-time continuum or something? Because if we end up having to kill him again to restore reality, I'm <em>out</em>. No way."</p><p>"No," Bruce says. "I didn't die."</p><p>Clark blinks down at him. He's still got a hand under Bruce's head, cradling, and Bruce doesn't quite seem able to hold it up for himself; but Bruce is looking up at him with clear eyes, awake, aware.</p><p>"I'll go get Victor," Barry blurts. "I'll go—I'll go get everyone. I'll—Diana's—"</p><p>"Diana's at the lake house with Alfred," Clark says. God, that conversation feels like it was about a week ago.</p><p>"Alfred! I'll get Alfred, too," Barry agrees, and then vanishes again, in a flurry of blue-white sparks.</p><p>Bruce hasn't looked away.</p><p>"You came for me," he says.</p><p>"I—"</p><p>"You got me out before the ship crashed. You brought me here. You looked for me?"</p><p>"Of course I <em>looked</em> for you," Clark says, and then stops, shakes his head. There's a laugh trying to bubble its way up from somewhere, half-hysterical. His fingers are in Bruce's hair and he can't let go and Bruce is looking at him like he's an idiot.</p><p>"You couldn't find me. Not because I'd been vaporized. Because you'd already come for me."</p><p>Clark squeezes his eyes shut. Jesus. Causality; an endless loop. Is it true? Did Clark spend half the day searching fruitlessly, sinking gradually into despair, when he'd—when his future self had—already rescued Bruce hours before?</p><p>"It worked," he manages. "I don't care how." And god, he can't help himself; he leans down again, rests his face against Bruce's, brushes his mouth against the line of Bruce's jaw. He'd already wanted Bruce back, he'd already been desperate—he hadn't known how much worse it could get, not then, not when he'd hardly known who Bruce was.</p><p>But now he does. Now he does, and Bruce is here again, whole and alive under his hands, and Clark isn't going to get yanked away from him in a flash of white light, isn't going to leave him waiting.</p><p>"I've got you," he says, against Bruce's jaw. "I remember everything, and I've got you, and I'm not letting go."</p><p>And Bruce shivers beneath him, reaches up and settles an unsteady hand at the nape of his neck, thumb skimming shakily along the side of his throat. "If you're waiting for me to talk you out of it," he says, very low, and then stops.</p><p>Clark has to look at him then—takes the opportunity to touch his face, his brow, to rub a little blood off his temple with one thumb. "What?"</p><p>"Keep waiting," Bruce advises, and Clark laughs, helpless, eyes stinging, and kisses him again.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><span class="small">Seriously, DO NOT FORGET TO GO LOOK AT <a href="https://imgur.com/a/mz2eqoV">THE ART</a></span> </p></blockquote></div></div>
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